Incident Overview
A DNS hijack has led to hackers withdrawing $400,000 worth of Stellar Lumen (XLM) coins from wallets hosted by Blackwallet.co without users’ permission.
As multiple sources reported, attackers took control of BlackWallet’s hosting server, changing settings to allow code to run which automatically sent customer balances over 20XLM to an address under the hackers’ control.
The hacker's wallet:
https://stellarchain.io/address/GBH4TZYZ4IRCPO44CBOLFUHULU2WGALXTAVESQA6432MBJMABBB4GIYI
Incident Report
Protocol Information
What the Attacker Needed to Succeed
Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to BlackWallet, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 2018).
- Verify all logic paths related to Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control Attacks attack class for patterns
- Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs
Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.
Free TrialSecurity Audit History
- Audit Report 1 Report
Related Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next BlackWallet
The BlackWallet hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.